What is Cēsis Concert Hall?
Cēsis Concert Hall is a unique, multi-functional cultural center of both national and regional significance. While it offers a wide variety of classical and popular music concerts, its hallmark events—both locally and internationally—are two annual classical music festivals. In addition to the concert hall, the venue includes a daily cinema and an exhibition hall, making it a vibrant hub for diverse cultural experiences.
What problems were they trying to solve?
The Cēsis Concert Hall homepage needed to serve as the central platform for the venue's various activities: concerts, cinema, exhibitions, and festivals. Since there were no separate websites for the cinema, exhibition hall, or music festivals, the homepage had to clearly present all this content while keeping the main focus on music. Additionally, services such as guided tours, space rentals, and private film screenings also had to be seamlessly integrated into the site.
Understanding the users
To better understand the needs of the website’s users, we developed personas and user stories. The existing homepage was outdated and lacked basic functionality and data analytics tools, which meant there were no insights into user behavior. This made the redesign crucial for improving the overall user experience.
Information architecture
Users expect to find information quickly. In this case, the website contained a variety of different content types, and one of the biggest challenges was organizing this information intuitively. We designed a clear sitemap, content map, and wireframes to structure the information effectively.
Prototyping and user Interviews
To validate our approach, we created a prototype of the website with one specific goal: users should be able to find a concert on a specific date and purchase a ticket. We conducted user interviews with participants who matched our defined personas, and each user successfully completed the task.
Design and development
When selecting technologies for a project, we follow two core principles: simplicity and openness. “Do not exaggerate” means we choose technologies that provide just the right functionality to meet business goals without overcomplicating the process. “Make it open” ensures that the client owns the technology, allowing any developer—not just our team—to work with it. For this project, we chose PHP with Laravel, one of the most popular frameworks, and MySQL for the database.
Result
"I highly value the precise planning of time and work during the project, customer-oriented cooperation, responsiveness, and professional advice for achieving the organization’s goals. The deadlines for the website development were met, and the quality of the website is as expected."
— Egija Saļņikova, Head of Marketing and Communication, Cēsis Concert Hall